Competitor Chips By: Chip Seymour April 26, 2002 CS 350

Introduction AMD K6 AMD K6-2 AMD K6-II AMD K-7 (Athlon)

AMD K6 Launched May 1997 Credible challenger to Intel Built around NexGen 686 core 166 – 300 MHz

Use of AMD K6 High levels of power at an affordable price Impressive performance in the Windows 95/98 platform Strengths in processing and web browsing Weaknesses in high-end graphics, gaming and anything to do with floating point

AMD K6-2 Entered the PC scene in the summer of 1998 Extended use of the Super Socket 7 platform “3D Now!” – new instructions 266 – 400 MHZ

A Closer look at AMD K6-2 Pros - Equal, if not better performance than Intel’s Pentium II MHz front side bus - Price Cons - Lost to Pentium once speed rose to 400 MHz - Floating point performance

AMD K6-III Introduced 1999 Sees its level 2 cache memory integrated directly onto the processor core

Use of AMD K6-III Puts Intel’s Pentium III and Celeron to shame to shame for everyday functions Floating point performance still lingers Super Socket 7 is not the most reliable

AMD K7 Offered fastest processor speed at its release Vastly improved floating point performance Alpha EV6 bus removes dependence upon Intel bus technology

Intel’s Response AMD K7 – the first time Intel has been beaten to a new architecture of “x86” processors Intel fell behind because they were busy working on all new chip architecture, which featured true 64 bit processing

AMD K7 Conclusion Stunning performance in all aspects First chip by AMD to be truly competitive in all respects Friendly pricing lost in the newer K7 chip

AMD in Conclusion… Aggressively attacked Intel Accomplished a better floating point scheme The benefits of the Intel / AMD competition can now be seen